The Moggill Creek Incident

Karl Jenkins had proposed that they meet for coffee somewhere public. Jamie Greyson refused and named the footbridge where the walking track crossed Moggill Creek west of Brookfield, a place they had walked together in the winter. They met there in the late afternoon, with storm cloud building again over the ranges. Several days of heavy rain had turned the creek brown and fast beneath the bridge.

Jamie arrived in jeans and a flannel shirt and looked as though he had not slept in days. His eyes were red-rimmed and would not settle. Through most of the conversation he watched the tree line behind Karl rather than Karl himself, and his hands shook whenever he was not gripping the railing. He kept a piece of paper folded in one fist.

Karl had come to ask why Jamie had missed the party. He went further than that. He accused Jamie of lying to him for weeks, and of hiding something that was neither trivial nor safe. Jamie denied it. He said he was keeping out of sight because he was being watched, followed and tracked, his calls monitored and his movements known. He would not say by whom.

Karl did not believe him, or did not believe the danger was where Jamie said it was. The argument escalated quickly from accusation to insult, and both men's voices rose until they carried off the trees on either bank. At the height of it Karl hit Jamie once in the face with his closed fist.

Jamie's boots slid on the grit tracked across the planks. He went backwards against the railing and over it, and the piece of paper came out of his hand as he fell. He struck the water hard. The creek was chest-deep and running fast enough to take him under and carry him several metres downstream before he came up.

For some seconds Karl did not move from the railing. Then he picked up the paper from the planks, crossed to the far side of the bridge and ran down the bank, slipping in the mud and shouting Jamie's name. Jamie had caught a branch overhanging the far bank. It bent but held, and he used it and then the exposed roots below it to haul himself out of the water.

Karl reached him as he collapsed onto the mud, soaked through and shaking, his lips turning blue. He did not reach down to help him up. Neither man spoke about the punch.

The paper was a torn corner of cheap, yellowed stock, damp now at the edges. Two words were written on it in blue ballpoint in a hand that was not Jamie's: Killerton Enterprises. Karl asked whether Jamie had dropped something important. Jamie's face showed open fear before he controlled it. He said it was nothing, a scrap of rubbish. He watched the paper in Karl's hand the whole time he was saying so.

Karl kept it. Jamie got to his feet without another word and walked away along the track, wet through, and did not look back.

Neither man reported what had happened at Moggill Creek, to the police or to anyone else.